Motorola Moto X Teardown

Teardown

What does $12.5 billion dollars buy you nowadays? In Google's case, it buys Motorola, Inc. and all of its designs and patents. Is it what we would have spent the money on? Probably not, but the result of the acquisition is Motorola's first smartphone, designed and assembled in the United States—the Moto X.

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The top of the Moto X houses the centered headphone jack. We haven't seen this placement on too many recent smartphones.

Does it make more sense than a headphone jack on the bottom of a phone? Only time will tell…(but yes, it probably makes more sense).

Since we tend to have a lot of devices laying around, we might as well do some comparisons! The Moto X is certainly not small, but it is a bit smaller than the S4, and we are fans of the contoured back.

This is the first and only smartphone that's "Designed & Assembled in the USA," to our knowledge.

We release the ZIF connector of a big ol' rear-case-mounted flash assembly, and after 6 full steps, we are finally into the device.

Our guess is that the adhesive pad was added to make the phone feel more solid than one purely secured with clips. The pad also keeps the flash firmly in place, and may act as as padding to protect internal components.

Our "Woven Black" case has a nice weave. While it's probably not actual kevlar fibers, the molding makes for a nice view — you can see right through it!

A spudger helps us unclip a small microphone board from the earpiece speaker.

The microphone assembly clings (like a baby sloth) to the earpiece speaker to maintain a solid connection with the spring contacts below.

Naturally, we love design innovation. We can tell that a considerable amount of effort went in to the internal design of this device; the number of clips and contacts we've found so far is a great testament to that.

To your question "Does it make more sense than a headphone jack on the bottom of a phone? Only time will tell…(but yes, it probably makes more sense)." I strongly agree; I would suggest that it is much better to have the phone in your pocket with the earbud wire coming out the top than for the connector/wire to be bent/stressed down at the bottom of your pocket.

Does anyone know where I can find the plastic/rubber gasket piece that sits over the proximity sensor. I've had the careless misfortune of losing not 1 but 2 of these during past services on this model, and have discovered them to be vital in the operation of the proximity sensor and thus the phone itself.

Fake rubbery carbon back cover is harder to remove than the stiffer pink back cover variant:

It uses two layers of glue in between a silicon buffer, the glue pad on the outer side sticks way better to the rubber than the layer that adheres to the nfc antenna/battery. Danger here is the connecting element for the camera flash being sandwiched here also,

is more fragile during the removal (due to bendiness) at weak points like the volume buttons and the first points near the SIM slot. Make sure the glue got warm enough.

Obviously the phone you tore down was saturated with glue... but I don't think they all are. I've torn down 5-6 of these devices and not run into the glue yet (the back just pops off super clean and easy). The phones I attacked were couple of custom colored ones from the online store and a handful of "developer edition phones". Maybe the glue is just on the stock / mass produced variant?

I miss my slot cars! Kids today have no idea how cool it was to start out with a basic one and step up to customizing everything, from motor to gear ratio, and to get crazy with a custom painted molded chassis.

It's interesting that the vibrator motor is rigidly attached to the PCB and is next to the camera. Many Moto X's develop a problem that makes the camera stop working over time. Is there a connection? (or should I say, a loose connection?)

Don't buy the replacement glass only from ebay, buy the glass + frame. You will see that the glass only has a "lip" for the plastic mold to mold over, which is something most of us cannot do. Also, beware that the glass over the front camera, make sure it is NOT tinted before install... The one I got has "tint" over it, which is actually meant for the proximity sensor (IR)

Glass+frame is the way to go if just the Glass is broken, but LCD and touch still work.

You also don't need to disassemble it completely. Only open the bottom two torx screws, then heat up the glass and carefully remove the glass parts from the panel and frame. Pry off the the old frame but don't loose the bolts, you'll need them. Ebay frames+glass come without bolts.

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